The Tale of a Trooper Part 13

During the day the Turks sh.e.l.led the vessel, and turned machine-guns on her. The sh.e.l.ls, which Mac could hear bursting as he lay in his bunk, did no damage, but the machine-gun fire caught one wounded man lying on deck, made several chips in the deck and holes through the operating theatre, narrowly missing a medical officer at work on a case and rattled against the steel sides. The ship moved out to a safer anchorage. Mac heard in later days that a destroyer had been carelessly firing from under the lee of the hospital ship. They took on board that day another thousand cases, again transferred the less seriously wounded to the _Aquitania_, and returned once more to Anzac.

They left Anzac finally on Friday, called again at Mudros to discharge the light cases, and set a course for Alexandria, much to Mac's relief.

One day he was taken on a stretcher to the operating theatre, where he drifted strangely away from earthly things, and woke again in his bunk.

Once he had a glorious sleep, after an injection of morphia, but usually he lay awake, tired and restless. There was no one to talk to, except on those rare but pleasant moments when the good padre and the ever-cheering sister found a few spare minutes. All those near him were badly wounded and far too ill to speak. Some died, and, wrapped in a blanket, disappeared from the ward to join the line of corpses on an upper deck, waiting the dawning hour and the parting words of the padre to plunge with firebars at their feet into the blue Mediterranean. Of what had finally happened on those Gallipoli heights no one could say definitely, and there were disappointing and unsatisfactory rumours. About noon one day the vessel pa.s.sed much wreckage of shattered boats, oars, sun helmets, lifebelts and so on, and cruised about for some time looking for survivors, but found none.

It was the scene of the foundering a few hours earlier of the _Royal Edward_ with many hundred fine fellows. The padre brought what news he could to Mac, and was seldom unaccompanied by something tempting in the way of sweets or fruit.

On Monday about the middle of the morning the vessel tied up at Alexandria. The heat was almost unbearable, for no breeze stirred in the hot confines of the dock to send a cooling breath into the stuffy depths of the ship. Mac had a wild longing to get off the ship, and he must have become light-headed. He had been told he would be sent ash.o.r.e before evening, but it seemed to him hour after hour had pa.s.sed and he knew it must be ten o'clock at night. He gave up hope, and said to the sister when she came near him that he supposed no one would be sent ash.o.r.e now until morning.

"But it's only midday. You'll all go ash.o.r.e this afternoon."

"Midday on Monday or Tuesday?" Mac inquired.

"Monday, of course, you silly old boy."

Days seemed to pa.s.s before the stretcher-bearers commenced removing the wounded from his ward, but it was only four in the afternoon when he was put on a stretcher, taken up in a lift and carried down the gangway across the pier to an ambulance. For those fifty yards through the fierce sun, an English woman walked beside him holding a parasol over his head, and he was deeply touched by so thoughtful a kindness. From what he had seen of the English ladies of Egypt during the terrible shortage of trained hospital workers, he knew that no words could describe the magnificence of their actions. The ambulance rattled away, and he heard again the many noises of an Egyptian street. It was a dreary journey of nearly an hour, for the springs of the car had long abandoned their functions, and the jolting over the cobbled roads was agony to his wounded head.

He was taken to the 17th General Hospital at Ramleh, and was placed on a low basket arrangement in a big marquee, with its sides rolled up so that the least hot of any stray breeze might find its way in. The floor was the desert sand. It was in these days that the shamefully inadequate preparations for the wounded were most felt, yet the sufferers themselves did not complain, and the hospital staffs and the civilian population of Egypt went to work in that scorching heat to make the best use of their strength and of the short supply of material available. So the wounded, knowing that all there were doing their best uncomplainingly accepted going without dressings when they would have brought great relief; accepted bad food sometimes, the discomfort of the wicket beds in the stifling heat of the marquees; and, armed each with a fly whisk, they made the best of a bad job. The sisters were magnificent, and, indeed, everybody was. The lightly wounded, too, did all in their power for those who could not walk.

Several hours after Mac arrived, he was handed a bowl of rice mixed with condensed milk, and though it had been made some time, and had fermented, he was hungry and ate it eagerly. Then a sister dressed his wound, and soon the marquee was left to itself for the night. For the first time in several days, in spite of the fact that his head felt very bad, he went to sleep, and his waking was full of strange, unutterable horror. He found himself crawling with his hands and knees on the sand. He was awake, but why was it he could not see? He crawled round and round, but could find nothing but sand, sand everywhere, nothing but sand. He felt terribly alone, and he could not recall the reason of it all, or why he could not see. He called out in his terror--again--and again--what, he did not know. Then an old sister seized him. "You poor old boy. What have you crawled out of the tent for?" And he remembered again where he was. She took him back to his bed, soothed him as a mother would calm a terrified child.

Mac was trembling like a leaf.

Tuesday dragged wearily by. He was in low condition, and very, very tired and his head ached violently. Between the flies, the heat and the uncomfortable bed, it was not a happy home; but the kindness of the sisters and the other wounded men who came to him occasionally, went far towards making it all bearable. There were men worse than he in that marquee, men in agony and near to death, with torn, septic wounds, but sticking it out without a word.

Wednesday brought changes. The padre of the hospital ship had cabled to his father in London that he was all right, and what hospital he was going to; and now several people came to see him. Mac told them he would like to go home as soon as he could be sent, as there could be no more campaigning for him and the sooner he was home the better. The M.O. said that a hospital-ship was leaving on the following day and that he would be sent by it. Mac was put in a ward that afternoon. He was brought some clothes for the morning, but, being fed up with bed, unknown to the sister, he donned them straight away and went and sat by the window. He felt very groggy, but getting up and about bucked him up tremendously.

Next morning he took farewell of the sister, and, clad in a Tommy uniform built for some one many sizes smaller, a pair of heavy boots of huge calibre, and a Tommy cap perched on top of his bandages, he walked downstairs with an orderly. But out in the open the sun was too much for him and laid him low, when he was converted into a stretcher-case, and swung away on an ambulance much more comfortable than the one which brought him. Again he was carried across the sun-baked pier, sheltered from the sun and protected from the flies by one of those splendid Alexandrian women, and taken down into a comfortable bunk in the hospital-ship _Dongola_. Mac found in the adjutant of the ship a friend of bygone days, who placed him in a spare deck cabin, which he found not at all an unpleasant home for the next ten days.

He speedily gained strength at sea, and began to enjoy life a bit more.

A fine Australian, who was but slightly wounded, took Mac under his wing, and with ceaseless care and affection walked with him on deck, and in a wonderfully unselfish way did many little things to make time pa.s.s quickly for him. A cheery Scottish sister poked her head in occasionally, and came in the evening to do his dressing. The orderly who brought Mac's meals, was an earnest, hardworking man, who had worked once with a missionary among the Eskimos, and who did the work of several lazy orderlies as well as his own. Late in the evening, as a special treat, he brought a gramophone up from below deck, stood it on a chair in the middle of the small cabin, directed the trumpet straight at Mac's head, and set in motion mournful hymn tunes. It was tough going for his aching head; but the earnest orderly was so wrapped up in giving to him what he thought was great pleasure that he had not the heart to stop him. Mac would silence it for a time by encouraging dissertations on Eskimo life, or the future of the Gospel in India. An hour of the gramophone, and it would retire below to end its rasping for the day.

Twelve hot hours were pa.s.sed in the Grand Harbour of Malta, while thousands of cackling fowls were lowered from the boat deck and sent ash.o.r.e for men in hospital. The two following days Mac was almost entirely deserted, as a heavy sea sent most of the sisters, orderlies and patients to their bunks. The first night no one came to dress his head; but the second night a quaint rough stoker put in an appearance, and, chatting cheerfully the while, made his head more or less comfortable. No water came for washing, and on two rare occasions a fleeting orderly left a plate of some sort of food or other. He spent those two days in bed, and was thankful when they were over. From then onward the voyage went well, snoozing on deck in a chair, or walking up and down arm and arm with the Australian.

At length, in the keen air of an English autumn morning, Mac stood by the ship's rail as she moved quietly up Southampton Water, to berth in due course alongside a pier and a hospital train. Mac had dreamed that it might be so, though he scarcely dared to hope that it would come true; but the gangway was scarcely down before his father and his sister were on the deck and had him in their arms. In the middle of the afternoon the hospital train stopped at a Surrey station; and before very long he was being undressed, bathed and put to bed.

Presently, the sister, the medical officer, his father and his sister withdrew quietly from the bright little room, saying that he must go to sleep after the excitements of the day. And to sleep Mac went, feeling more comfortable and happy than he had been for many a long day.

CHAPTER XXV

HOMEWARD

The tents sway and flap vigorously as gusts of wind tear through the camp, carrying clouds of sand across the island. Through the darkness comes the sound of the lashing of the date palms and the tamarisks as they swing to the gale. Within a straining, war-worn tent, lit by a flickering candle, stuck in a grease-streaked bottle, sit several mounted men of the old Brigade, their faces brown and weather-beaten from long campaigning in the Sinai Desert and amid Palestine hills.

The gear and stuff scattered casually about the tent tell it is the abode of an old hand of long service, who worries little about the frills of base and peace-time armies. And there, too, sprawled half-way across a camp bed is Mac. They yarn about old times, Gallipoli days and after, laughing often, though sometimes in affectionate, quieter tones they speak of a fallen comrade. It is midnight, the ill-used candle has not many minutes of life to run, and the desert wind bellows over the camp.

Three and a half years have pa.s.sed since Mac found himself in the comfortable security of an English hospital--far from unpleasant years, during which the comradeship of his fellow-soldiers, and the kindness of many friends have fully made good the sight Mac lost on the summit of Chanak Bair. He has not lost touch with the men of the Expeditionary Force during their long weary years in France and Palestine, but has worked among them to the best of his limited powers.

And now this stormy night in March 1919 finds him again with his old comrades of the Mounted Brigade, who, with a glorious campaign behind them, are resting for a while on an island on Lake Timsah till a transport at Suez is ready for them to embark. Mac has visited old haunts and old friends in Egypt, and to-morrow he, too, goes on board his ship at Suez, bound for home. Again there will be warm sleepy days in the Red Sea, with delicate sunsets and cool nights, a few sunny weeks in the tropics, some heavy weather, no doubt, south of Australia, and then New Zealand.

Nearly five years of war, strange adventures and experiences of the wider world have brought changes in the lives of those whose fate was not to fall in the field, and have left them a little sadder and, maybe, a little wiser. Mac's life must be vastly changed from the old one, and for him there will be no more work with his dogs among the sheep and cattle, and no more of many of the old things. But he has no regrets. Least of all does he regret the day which first found him a trooper of the Mounted Rifles. Others may forget the men who went away, many never to return; but deep in the hearts of their comrades will be fully valued those years of campaigning, when they knew the unselfish sacrifices of comradeship, the careless courage, the humour, and the affection of man.

Through these years Mac often thought of that wild winter day in the bush when he and Charley, looking at the old Boer War pictures, had resented the fact that they had been too young to join in it, and that there was no, war for them to go to. Within a year Charley had been killed, wounded three times in an attack at Cape h.e.l.les; and three months later Mac himself had been incapacitated for life. Their longing for war had been fulfilled with a vengeance. True, war had brought them no good; but it had had many grand moments, power to strengthen character and inspiration towards great thought, art and unselfishness. Tragedy, crime and disease had also followed in its train, though, for his part, Mac thought that some good must come of it all.

THE END